So then you sort of implied that OBVIOUSLY I hadn't seen any Russian bots and was just squirming.

So then I said, well, here's a poster who is pretty clearly a foreign influence operation of some kind, in my opinion, but you can draw your own conclusions.

And then you said that OBVIOUSLY I'm just against anyone who is critical of America's bipartisan support for genocide, and the whole thing about the calculator and the actual point of my post was just a distraction I guess.

When I addressed that you moved to saying OBVIOUSLY the purpose of this non American person "screaming about the ghoulish shit the dems do" is just to help the Democrats win the election by changing their messaging, because the DNC reads Lemmy I guess? And you know that that was this person's motivation?

There is a pretty good video which talks about this argumentation strategy. It's never just "Hey show me an example of a Russian bot" "Here's an example, it doesn't completely fit what you asked for but it's what I've got" "Yeah that doesn't exactly fit, I thought you said Russian bots" "Tru dat" (fin). It always has to morph into some new argument in every message, and it always has to be part of a prepackaged talking point ("I'm just trying to help the Democrats" "Oh I guess you think ANYONE who's anti-genocide is a Russian bot" are both things I've seen a bunch of times before. The first one doesn't even apply here, since I think ostensibly we were talking about why this other person was airing these particular views, which you would have no idea about why they would say it, or what the "purpose" was. Anyway, and so on.)

The running theme here is all these people who ostensibly want a frank exchange of ideas spend a lot more time making accusations than asking questions. Because why ask what you believe when they can tell you what you believe and make you correct them? And if you ever don't go to the trouble of correcting them, must be because they're right.